She raised her cell phone and dialed the Provincial Coroner’s Office lab in Toronto. It was early, barely after eight, but the lab was staffed twenty-four seven. Normally, she let the local authorities handle any forensic evidence she might find, but this time, she was reluctant to do so. She put the phone on speaker so she could continue to investigate while she spoke.
“PCO lab. Rick speaking,”
“Good morning, Rick. This is Michelle Thomas. I’m at the Lake of the Mountain Resort near Picton, and I’m dealing with a compromised crime scene. I need an independent pick-up of a car and a canoe for analysis. What have you got for me, and how soon can they get here?”
“You think the local LEOs aren’t playing ball?”
“Let’s just say they’re taking a lot longer than I like providing me with vital information. It’s a small place. I have a feeling someone might be trying to push their weight around, maybe influence the investigation. Is there anything nearby I can piggyback on?”
“I can send someone to you within the hour. There’s a joint RCMP/OPP task force doing a drug investigation that’s been going on for some time. We’ve got a couple of indies working for us in the area. The man can take the car and canoe to Kingston for examination. Will that work? Belleville’s closer, but if you think someone’s in bed with the law, it might be too close.”
“I agree. I almost wish my cadavers were in Kingston too. No one pulls my chain.”
Rick laughed. “No one would dare, Dr. T. You’d have them for breakfast.”
Michelle’s dogged determination to get to the bottom of things was well-known in the coroner’s office.
“You’re right.” She chuckled. Her earlier good humor reasserted itself. “What’s this guy’s name so I know I’m releasing my evidence to the right man?”
“Undercover RCMP’s named Stevens.” Rick answered. “He’ll be driving a pickup with a towing rig on the back. The truck has the vanity plate, BRN T B WLD—born to be wild. What do you want Kingston to look for?”
“Prints in the car, mud on the tires—anything to point to where the vehicle’s been in the last seventy-two hours. Anything on the canoe—prints, etc. I don’t think my victims were in it, but I need to know for sure.”
“I just contacted him. You’re in luck. He’s on the island. He should be there in twenty.”
“Thanks, Rick.”
“Anytime, Dr. T. It’s always a pleasure doing business with you.”
Michelle hung up the phone and checked her watch. Rick had said twenty minutes, which meant the operative must be near Picton. Maybe she’d ask him a few questions when he arrived. She might even mention Tony’s suspicions and see if they fit with their drug investigation. Meth labs had sprung up all over the country, and they were bad news. If there was one on the island, and it was dumping its sludge into the lake, Tony was right—the results could be catastrophic.
Michelle walked along the beach over to the marshy area to the north where Tony had seen the ghost. As she expected, there were no footprints to show anyone had walked this way. She turned back toward the canoe and the crime scene, and continued beyond it until she could walk no farther.
The sound of a truck pulling into the parking lot startled her. She glanced at her watch. Fifteen minutes had passed. She crossed the lawn to the edge of the parking lot. A large man, unruly hair half hidden by a Blue Jays ball cap, wearing green, oil-stained coveralls, stepped out of the truck. She scanned the license plate to make sure it was the one she wanted.
“Dr. Thomas? I’m Chad Stevens. I got a call from my friend Rick. He said you had something for me to pick up?”
“Hi, Chad. I do. That old Chev, and the red canoe down there. Sorry, I don’t have keys for the car.”
Chad walked over to the car, and looked in the window.
“That’s because they’re in the ignition, see? People dumping cars often do that. Don’t want to get caught with the keys. It’s a dead giveaway.”
He went back to his truck and pulled a thin metal bar out of a toolbox in the back. Within seconds he had Aaron’s car door opened. He reached for the keys, turned them, and the engine roared to life. He backed the vehicle up, and loaded it onto the tow harness he had attached to his pickup. When he was done, he came over to her.
“One down, one to go.”
They walked down the lawn to the crime scene. Chad stepped over the crime tape and held it down for her.
“I heard about the drownings—rumor has it the bodies were in an odd configuration. News travels fast here. I also heard those kids thought they’d found evidence of meth being cooked around here. Were they using?”
Michelle looked up surprised. “Don’t know yet, but my gut says no. I’ve ordered a drug screen. How do you know about the meth? The professor told me they’d kept that information quiet.”
Had Tony lied to her? If he’d lied about that, what else was he lying about?
Chad shook his head.
“It isn’t general knowledge, but we have informants all over the island. We believe there’s been a meth lab in operation in the area for about a year now. New stuff came onto the market just before Christmas, and we traced it here, but we haven’t been able to get any solid leads. My informant claimed he heard some guy on the phone talking about it in one of the bars in Picton on Thursday afternoon. He didn’t see the guy’s face, but he was pretty sure he wasn’t a local. My CI said the man was a big guy with an accent—French maybe. We get a lot of Quebecers through here.”
“So if those kids found ammonia hydroxide in the water, it would be the kind of proof you needed?”
He whistled. “Is that what they found? That’s huge. Where are the samples? I’ll take those back too.”
“Apparently, they’ve vanished. Tell me, is the mayor aware of your investigation?”
Chad rubbed the back of his neck.
“He is and he isn’t. He’s new to the area, showed up as mayor not too long before we think the meth lab got started. It’s probably all coincidence, but we couldn’t find a lot of information about him, and a man with deep pockets and a sketchy past always sets my hackles on edge. He’s a cocky son of a bitch, very sure of himself, and I dislike people like him out of principle. He thinks we’re here because of marijuana and smuggled tobacco. He’s given us a few leads, so he may be one of the good guys, but I’ve been doing this for twenty years, and something about all this stinks. If those kids found a meth lab, those deaths probably aren’t an accident. Watch your back. For the record, he doesn’t know about me, so let’s keep this between us.”
“What about the professor?”
“He checks out, as did his students. Nothing suspicious in their backgrounds. If he’s right, people aren’t going to stop dying. Where meth’s involved, they usually don’t.”
He handed her a card and picked up the canoe as if it weighed nothing.
“If those samples turn up, I’d love to get my hands on them. Kingston will send the results from this to Toronto, and you’ll get them from there. Okay?”
“Yes, that’ll work.”
Chad carried the canoe up to the truck, placed it in the back, and strapped it down. He went to the cab, got a receipt book with Stevens’ Towing printed at the top and completed the form.
Michelle watched the whole process in silence, certain her mouth was gaping open to fit the stunned look on her face. An official receipt?
He winked at her. “Chain of evidence, right? Someone’s going to want to know where things went. When they come looking for them, and if what I suspect is true, they will, I’ll say I delivered them to the police lab as ordered. No secrets, but they won’t get anything out of Kingston, I promise. I’ll call Rick if anything interesting pops up.”
She chuckled. “Thanks. I suppose they might. I guess that’s why you’re the undercover expert, and I’m not. I’ll be in touch if I have anything else for you.”
“Rick tells me you’re a bit of a bulldog. Don’t go anywhere alone. If the b
ig boys are involved here, they have a long reach. Don’t trust anybody. I gather the mayor’s your contact on this. Mayor Ron has his fingers in a lot of pies. What I told you stays between us. We want to shut this operation down, not have it relocated to another area.”
She nodded.
He waved, got in the truck, and left without a backward glance.
Michelle watched Chad’s truck turn left out of the parking area. He’s probably heading toward the Glenora Ferry, the quickest way to the mainland. She turned on her heel and returned to her cottage. Removing her boots and her jacket, she slipped her feet into the moccasins, and carried the papers Chad had given her over to the table. After slipping the card into a slot in her briefcase, she put the documents in a file folder. Chad’s words hadn’t been reassuring. She might not have ruled the deaths homicide, but she’d definitely ruled them suspicious. When whoever was involved heard that news, she might be in danger. Michelle shuddered.
Entering the kitchen, she picked up the pot Tony had left for her, and removed its contents. She wished she could tell him about the RCMP investigation, and the fact that he might be right about the meth lab, but until he could prove what he’d found, her hands were tied. She couldn’t share that confidential information any more than she could tell him that she and his ghost were one and the same. What Chad had said about Ron bothered her too. Audra said things weren’t as they seemed, but it seemed more people questioned Ron’s motives than Tony’s. Her senses told her to believe the evidence, but Audra said to believe her heart, and so far, her heart had no reason to doubt Ron—or did it? He’d lied to her about Aaron and the professor, her conscience prodded, was he lying about anything else?
She put the eggs on to boil and booted up her computer. While she waited for it to connect to the Internet, she took out the USB drive Isaac had given her. She slipped it into the USB slot on the laptop. The computer took only seconds to load the files. He’d taken three pictures—one from each side and one from the lawn looking down at the bodies. She stared at that picture and enlarged it. There, half buried in the sand, caught between Aaron’s legs, was a wine bottle. There hadn’t been a wine bottle on the beach. Someone had taken it. Why?
She zoomed in on the picture. The bottle was green, but the digitalization wouldn’t allow her to see the square label clearly. She’d found a cork in Lindsay’s pocket. Were the two items connected?
Once the eggs were cooked and she’d made toast, she sat down at the table to eat her breakfast and continued to examine Isaac’s pictures. There didn’t seem to be anything else that didn’t fit. She connected her phone to her computer and downloaded the pictures she’d taken of the beach. She examined the sand carefully, but there was no wine bottle, not even a depression of where the bottle had been, but the sand seemed highly disturbed in that area.
Her computer dinged telling her she had mail. She checked her inbox and found a message from Sheila with a file attached—the photographs she’d gotten from Isaac. Maybe the local LEOS were just slow. She opened the file, and there were the three photos. She looked at the first two, and they were the same as the ones Isaac had given her. She opened the third and frowned. The picture seemed different somehow. She gasped. The wine bottle was gone. Someone had used imaging software to remove it from the picture. There was only one reason that would have been done. Someone didn’t want her to know about that piece of evidence, and there was someone at the local police level ready to compromise the investigation. Thank goodness she’d gone with her instincts and sent the car and canoe to Kingston. She wished she could see that label. She’d send the photo to Toronto. Maybe Rick and the boys could do something with it. That bottle, wherever it was, was key evidence in a murder investigation.
She saved the two picture files and emailed them to Sheila’s secure address with instructions to print copies as soon as possible. Once the email was sent, she deleted it from her sent emails and erased Isaac’s pictures from her laptop’s C drive. She’d copied the files to a USB drive of her own, and had wiped Isaac’s clean as he’d asked. She might be overly cautious here, but better safe than sorry. Someone had doctored that photograph for a reason. No one could know she’d seen the original pictures or that Toronto had them. She’d have to speak to Isaac, ask him not to tell anyone. She also wanted to know to which officer he’d given the memory card. Something was rotten in Picton. Could Tony and Chad’s suspicions about Ron be right?
A scream tore the air. Michelle was outside in a second running toward the source of the disturbance. Kara stood near the shed, and Michelle raced over to her, not caring the lovely moccasins she wore were getting wet. Other people came running over from the inn. She reached Kara before they did.
Son of a bitch!
Isaac lay on the ground on his back. From the look of it, the man had slipped and struck his head against the large granite boulder he used to prop open the shed door. Michelle bent down and checked his carotid pulse. Nothing. The only person who knew about the missing wine bottle, other than the one who’d doctored the photograph, wouldn’t be telling anyone. She thought of the grandson he’d mentioned. He’d never see him grow up. A deep sadness filled her. Until she did the autopsy, she wouldn’t know for sure, but it looked as if someone else had been murdered.
“Kara, go back to the office and call nine-one-one.”
Chapter Twelve
Tony and Jackson ate breakfast at a fast food restaurant in Picton, before driving around the far section on the lake, trying to find a track, side road, or something that would bring them closer to the water, close to where the lights might have been the other night. They’d passed a few hiking trails into the park, but he wanted something large enough for a vehicle.
Eventually, they found a well-worn ATV trail, and he followed it down as far as he could. They were at the western-most section of the lake. He parked the SUV, and they got out of the vehicle. Together, they hiked down to the water’s edge. Tony held up his binoculars. From here, he had a clear view of the beach at the resort. The lights he’d seen the night after the storm might have belonged to teenagers out joyriding in ATVs. He was disappointed. He’d hoped to find something else. When he thought about it, he didn’t know what he’d hoped to find, but he was certain this wasn’t it. He’d been positive the lights had been higher, farther apart than an ATV’s.
He was pleased to see Jackson had gotten some rest. With the resiliency of youth once he’d handed off his misplaced guilt, he’d been able to sleep with a clear conscience. Tony thought of Michelle. He’d really put his foot in it last night. He wasn’t sure a couple of eggs would make up for any of it.
He looked down and noticed a few dead fish at the edge of the marsh. If there were toxins in the water in a high enough concentration, they would kill the fish. One or two dead fish like this was normal, but he’d take them back anyway. He turned to Jackson.
“Let’s start over there, and then walk along the edge of the lake and take readings every thirty feet or so. We’re on park land here, so we should be okay. If we see a drainage pipe, we’ll take samples there too. We’ll collect any dead fish we see along the way as well. Stay close to me, and if anyone approaches us, let me do the talking. We want at least four samples from each place. Number them accordingly. Record keeping has never been more important.”
“Right you are, Professor. Why so many samples?”
Jackson had finished filling four test tubes with water and inserting rubber stoppers in them. He was pasting labels with identification on the tubes.
“Half of them will be tested by another lab. We need corroboration of our findings. I spoke with the coroner from Toronto last night, and she’s willing to take some of them to be tested in Belleville. When those results confirm ours, there’s no way the mayor can deny toxins in the lake. He’ll have to call in the police.”
They continued as far as they could along the lake, but soon, firm land vanished as they reached the edge of the marsh on the southwest shore.
&nbs
p; “Let’s go back and see how close we can come to the source of the stream. I think we’ll have a tough time doing it. I’m pretty sure it’s private land, but we can always ask.” They retraced their steps to the SUV. “After we finish on the south side, let’s see what kind of results we get on the north.”
“Whatever you say, Professor.”
Tony started the SUV and drove back to the main road. He travelled an extra ten minutes before coming to a bridge over a swift moving stream considered to be one of the Lake of the Mountain’s sources of water. He pulled over, stopped the vehicle, got out, looked around, and frowned.
A large dairy farm with corn fields recently plowed occupied the south side of the road along with the Happy Valley Winery. The stream separated the two properties. While the farm looked prosperous, the winery didn’t. A heavy lock secured a gate with a “Keep Out” sign on it to a steel post. Whoever owned Happy Valley didn’t want visitors. He hadn’t heard of any winery going belly-up, so maybe it simply wasn’t open to the public at this time of year.
Across the road, the Whippoorwill Winery shared the lakeside with Henderson’s Slaughterhouse. The unplowed cornfield Tony had noticed the previous day separated the two properties. He wouldn’t be granted access there. Maybe the mayor would let Michelle take samples. He hated the thought of using her that way, actually encouraging her to get close to Ron, but how else could he test the water?
He turned to Jackson who’d joined him. “Get samples from the creek as close to the road as you can on the south side, and do the same on the north side in case someone stopped along the road and dumped the sludge here. We can eliminate the farm and that winery as sources, and maybe a roadside dump too. We’ll keep driving and see if there is any place where we can get closer to the lake on this side. If we can’t, we can always go back and get waders to check out the marsh. Otherwise, we can see how close we can get to the east side and get samples from the waterfall into the bay. If worse comes to worse, we’ll have to take a canoe and get samples from the lake itself as close to the shoreline as we can get. At least we’ll have readings from all around the lake and finding the greatest concentration will pinpoint the likely location of where the chemicals are being dumped.”
Echoes of the Past Page 17